County Registrar Verifies Term Limits Petition

Scott Schmidt, campaign manager of the West Hollywood Term Limits group, said Tuesday that the Los Angeles Country Registrar has verified the signatures on the term limits petition that circulated throughout the city in recent months. 

The petition asks the West Hollywood City Council to place an initiative on the March 2013 ballot that will allow voters to decide if term limits are necessary for city council members, or, for city council to adopt term limits immediately. 

In a press release, Schmidt said that the Term Limits group successfully gathered the minimum 2,344 signatures from registered West Hollywood voters needed to deem the petition sufficient, and now, city council must act on the petition. 

“From day one, this initiative has been a David-versus-Goliath effort,” said Schmidt in the press release. “While we celebrate our volunteers’ success in gathering enough signatures to place term limits on the ballot, there is plenty of hard work ahead to continue this conversation with the voters of West Hollywood and counter the attacks we know will be coming our way.”

The Term Limits group submitted the petition to City clerk Corey Schaffer on October 2, and Schmidt and key group organizer Sheila Lightfoot both said the petition had over 4,000 signatures.  

“West Hollywood voters understand that those seats on the City Council dias belong to the people, not to any one individual,” Lightfoot said in the press release. “Together, our friends and neighbors stood up for themselves and the opportunity for our City government to be a place where new ideas and new faces will be welcome.”

Currently, four of the five members of city council have served for over a decade: Mayor Jeffrey Prang for 15 years, Councilman John Heilman for 27 years, Councilwoman Abbe Land for 20 years, and Councilman John Duran for 11 years. 

“We brought forward this initiative because we love the City of West Hollywood; we want to give the people hope that our best minds have an opportunity to participate in City government without fear of intimidation and are confident in the voters of our City to leave no doubt in March,” Lightfoot said in the press release. 

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